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A Final Campaign Focus: Coal and CO2

By Andrew C. Revkin November 3, 2008 6:08 pmNovember 3, 2008 6:08 pm

The potential political costs of capping carbon dioxide from coal burning were on full display in the final hours of the presidential campaign. Anti-regulatory blogs and commentators and the McCain-Palin campaign made a push to publicize a 10-month-old comment by Senator Barack Obama about the high cost of coal burning if and when a hard cap is set for carbon dioxide emissions. “Audio: Obama Tells Paper He Will Bankrupt Coal Industry” is one of several Drudge Report headlines on the issue.

Joe Romm at Climateprogress.org noted today that Mr. Obama made an “inartful choice of words” in describing the process this way:

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.

But as Mr. Romm goes on to explain, “[F]undamentally his remarks reflect an accurate understanding of the impact — indeed, the goal — of serious climate regulations, if we ever get around to them. The right wing has tried to spin this as Obama saying will ‘bankrupt the coal industry.’ ”

Newsbusters.org feasted on the notion of a major industry being bankrupted by climate policy (and on the lack of “mainstream media” coverage of a 10-month-old remark made made in an interview with a major paper and openly available in recordings posted on the paper’s Web site).

But The United Mine Workers of America, a supporter of Mr. Obama, criticized what it said was “a last-minute distortion” by the McCain campaign and its supporters.

Over the weekend, according to The Washington Post, Mr. McCain — focused on critical, and coal-rich, Ohio and Pennsylvania — tried to position himself as a champion of coal and Mr. Obama as a foe of the fossil fuel:

Indeed, the one new line he unveiled Sunday — which his aides said he would use several times during his seven-state swing in the run-up to Election Day — was to make fun of something Obama had told a reporter, “The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster.”

Speaking before a crowd in Scranton, McCain said, “My friends, I’ve been a coal booster, and it’s going to create jobs, and we’re going to export coal to other countries and we are going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

Whatever you think of the claims about coal exports and coal-related jobs (several critics of Mr. McCain pounced on that statement), it does seem quite a stark turnabout for the candidate.
One question: If a map of United States coal reserves did not align so much with the map of battleground states, would Mr. McCain be in coal-boosting mode now?

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.